The Beatles Guitar [Paperback]

The Beatles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1987

This unique publication contains 52 favorite Beatles songs arranged exclusively for the guitar. It is designed to provide an accurate look into the lead and rhythm guitar styles of George Harrison and John Lennon. Instead of providing transcriptions of the guitars off the record, these arrangements use the musical elements of the bass, drums, keyboards and guitars all incorporated into one guitar so that they can be played alone or in a band. Written in tablature, this book also provides numbers, strums, accents and picking patterns for those who do not read music.

Product Details

• Paperback: 210 pages
• Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation (June 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 079350581X
• ISBN-13: 978-0793505814
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #62 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Pop Culture > Beatles

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Victim of Poor Reviews? Seems to me., June 21, 2010

By 

J. Nash "jasn" (New England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Beatles Guitar (Paperback)

I'm a beginner guitarist and cannot claim a great depth of experience with guitar tab books, but I have to say I've had a lot of fun with this book and I feel "The Beatles Guitar" has suffered from some poor and inaccurate reviews, likely scaring away some worthy buyers.

I bought this as my first tab book on a whim at a local guitar store and was immediately crushed to come home and read here the few but mostly negative reviews here, claiming the songs are for beginners only (sniff); not in the right key; poorly coordinated with the actual songs etc. I patiently put it aside untouched with plans to return it and ordered the very highly rated Best of The Beatles for Acoustic Guitar (Guitar Signature Licks) using PRIME. Well...be forewarned that not only does that book have far fewer songs, the scores are not fully fleshed out..they only provide enough background to explain how they are arranged (i.e. the songs are not even complete). To boot, they are not at all beginner-friendly and written for multiple guitars.

So...not having returned this version yet I cautiously decided to try a couple of the songs and whatta ya know... I had a blast! I tagged about eight songs, mostly from the earlier Beatles catalog, as they tend to be simpler, and let my fingers find new calluses to make these songs play well. I've even used the tabs to get a little finger picking in between the chords, and find that to be pretty well done too. But...there's another book around here that tops 'em all... The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook (Guitar Chord Songbook), which I've been feeling was my Holy Grail to overcome all the bad criticism this book is getting slammed for.

Thanks to Father's Day and an Amazon Wishlist I received the "Chord Songbook" and jumped right in. It really is a great book and maybe over time I will reach for it more times than Beatles Guitar, if for anything because it has so many more songs. But I just did a random scan of the same songs in each book and have to point out that the previous reviewer's dissing Beatles Guitar for dumbing down the songs is just plain wrong. From the songs I compared the keys are the same; capo positions are the same; chord placement and usage is the same (barring an occasional slight variant for the more complicated ones) and the lyrics are accurate too.

If anything, "The Beatles Guitar" provides even more info by listing the notes, tabs and strum patterns, so if you are not completely familiar with a song (not many aren't), this will help you out a lot. Try and figure out "Blackbird" without tabs, for instance.

Lastly, in the intro the book itself tells you they have taken some liberties with the original arrangements so that a solo guitarist can replicate some of the bass and drum sounds to give a listener a more complete song experience. Perhaps they have, but I haven't found that to be an extreme case.

If you've gotten through this long-winded diatribe thank you very much and we now return you to finding the right Beatles book for your level of playing. Don't count this one out too quickly. It has a lot of songs and a lot of good information. Best of luck.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Limited Usefulness But A Few Bright Spots In An Overall Mediocre Product!, November 10, 2009

By 

Frederick Baptist (Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Beatles Guitar (Paperback)

If you prefer quantity over quality then this book's for you as there are 52 tracks "transcribed" here. If accuracy is also not your cup of tea this book's for you. Overall the majority of the tracks here are playable although not if you want to play along with the cd. There are many tracks here that have better transcriptions elsewhere. For example if you want the best versions of "I Feel Fine", "All My Loving", "Day Tripper", "Hard Day's Night", "I Feel Fine", and "Paperback Writer" see The Beatles rock score: Twelve famous Beatles songs scored for small groups : complete with lyrics (Rock score). The rest are either downright inaccurate or missing the solo or some other fill.

There are however a few bright spots that I found useful by gleaning from the few accurate bits and then listening to the cd and these made this purchase a little worthwhile for me. For example, "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds", "Michelle", "Dear Prudence", and especially "Julia" where you have to completely ignore the tabs but use the good chord shapes and your ear to decipher the correct way to play. If you are looking for a good "Blackbird" transcription though you are gonna be disappointed here as they not only have trouble transcribing Travis picking but have inaccurately tabbed most of it. Fortunately I have already committed this to memory using another Beatles tab book which I've since lost years ago. If I knew at the time just how good that book that I got while on vacation in Perth Australia was, I'd probably have taken better care of it.

If you are willing to put in the effort to make some sense and hence use of this book then this purchase would not be a total loss but I'm assuming the reason you want to get a tab book in the first place is to reduce the time and effort of learning the tracks the hard way and by ear and if so this book is highly NOT recommended. It will surely frustrate beginners trying to sound like the cd and involves a lot of salvage work from experienced guitarists.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My copy is well worn, January 24, 2011

By 

maplewood - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Beatles Guitar (Paperback)

I was surprised how badly this book has been reviewed. I had it for many years and have pretty much worn it out. True, some chords are in a different key than the record. If you want the recorded versions, there are books available that specify "recorded versions". For the price this book is very good.